


House Calls

by artifactstorageroom3_archivist



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Angst, Drama, Horror, Kid Fic, M/M, Mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-28
Updated: 2009-10-28
Packaged: 2019-06-13 03:58:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15355725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artifactstorageroom3_archivist/pseuds/artifactstorageroom3_archivist
Summary: A mad scientist is out for revenge against William Ellison. In his mind the perfect way to do this is to kidnap one Blair Sandburg.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Elaine, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Artifact Storage Room 3](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Artifact_Storage_Room_3) and was moved to the AO3 as part of the Open Doors project in 2018. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are the creator and would like to claim this work, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Artifact Storage Room 3’s collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/artifactstorageroom3/profile).
> 
> **Author's notes:**
> 
> This fic was written for the 2009 spook_me challenge on livejournal. 
> 
> My prompts were: Mad Scientist, A Man Obsessed, and The Cosmic Puppets. I used all three.
> 
> Fair warning that this was born out of my desire to ‘challenge’ myself to write a horror story, and I can soundly say that Dean Koontz has nothing to worry about from me. It is not my normal type of work, so again, please check out the warnings.  
>   
> Many thanks to Mab who suffered through beta-ing this thing. Any mistakes you find are my own as I dithered around with this after she got it back to me.

There is nothing worse than a man obsessed with his work.

Jim couldn’t quite remember where he’d heard that line, but at the moment he had to honestly wonder if it applied to him. The reaction of his coworkers certainly seemed to imply that it did. He couldn’t blame them. Since Blair had left… Since Blair had left he’d gone a little batty. He could admit that. He knew that practically enshrining your best friend’s room was just this side of insane.

But, but, he really couldn’t bring himself to care. To be honest he kind of liked being on the edge. It gave him something to look forward to each day. Was today the day he’d finally snap and lose it?

Not to say that Blair had caused this tendency in him. He’d been a melancholy child after Bud was murdered, and he’d been a freaking psycho after he’d returned from Peru that first time.

He guessed that losing his guides did something funny to his brain. He’d ask for help on that little personal flaw, but the only person that he wanted to talk to about it was God knows where doing God knows what with God knows who. Certainly God knew that none of the above were Jim Ellison.

“Jim,” Simon’s voice cut into the path of the squirrel running laps in Jim’s head.

“Yeah, Simon?”

“I need you to come with me.”

Jim frowned at the proclamation. It didn’t sound like a friend who wanted to have a chat with his buddy, nor did it sound like a captain who was about to have a talk with his subordinate. It sounded… it sounded ominous.

“Blair?” Jim inwardly cursed himself for the word that sprung unwillingly past his lips and the longing and fear that came with it.

“Just come with me, I’ll explain once we get in the car.” Simon dodged the question.

“Blair?” Jim asked more firmly this time, his tone making it abundantly clear that he was not moving until he got an answer to that question at least.

Simon sighed but relented, “No. Your father.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Jimmy.” William Ellison said for the third time in fifteen minutes. He didn’t sound any better than the first time he had spoken his son’s name aloud either, Jim noted.

“Dad, you need to sit down,” he coached calmly as he tried to guide his father back to the sitting room’s sofa.

“I… God, Jimmy, there was so much blood.”

“I know, I know.”

“And it was so white. It didn’t… I didn’t think that it… I mean who would?”

“Mr. Ellison do you have any idea why somebody would’ve sent you this package? Have you noticed any strange behavior from acquaintances or been threatened lately?”

William’s laugh came out as a hoarse, joyless bark. “Do I have any idea why somebody left a _baby’s_ arm in a box on my front door step? No, Detective, I don’t think that I do. Is that the first thing that you think of when somebody gets angry with you? ‘I hope that drug dealing suspect doesn’t leave children’s body parts at my door’?”

“Mr. Ellison…”

“Don’t you use that tone of voice with me young man! I was calming down hysterical business men when you were in diapers; I damn well know when it’s being done to me!”

“Dad,” Jim cut in as he placed a consoling hand on his father’s arm, “Henri is just trying to do his job here. You need to let him.”

“Sorry.” William directed the apology towards his son’s coworker, but it was evident that it was given only because Jim had requested it.

“Not a problem,” Henri assured the older Ellison.

“To answer your question, no. I don’t know of anybody that is possibly deranged enough to send me that sort of thing. I have a lot of enemies, Detective Brown, but my enemies are the type that try to ruin me financially or try to ruin my golf game.”

Henri nodded and scribbled a few notes down. “I think that should be it for right now, Mr. Ellison. Let me know if anybody comes to mind, okay?”

William nodded in response and stood to go stare out the window.

Jim looked at his father for a moment before he stood himself and motioned his fellow detective out into the hallway.

“H, I think that you might need to consider the possibility that this has something to do with me or one of my cases.”

“You know that we’re going to check up on all possible leads, but you also know that you can’t go looking into this yourself or digging through your files.”

“I didn’t…”

“Jim, you’re Simon’s favorite pit bull for a reason. You’d spend hours on this in your spare time if you thought you could get by with it. But Simon said that you’re here solely for family support, and you’ve got to stick to that. Besides that package could’ve been aimed at the house keeper just as well as anybody else.”

Jim snorted. “Sally?”

“Jim…”

“Brown, Rafe needs to compare notes with you. He just finished up with the housekeeper,” Simon’s voice cut in as he dismissed one detective and stood staring at the other.

Henri cast a concerned glance between his captain and his coworker, but said nothing as he turned and went off in the direction that Simon had indicated.

“This isn’t good, Jim,” Simon stated once Brown was out of earshot.

“Yeah, tell me about it.”

“Rafe suggested to the housekeeper that she not stay here for a while.”

“It’s probably a good idea. A crime like this has a good chance of escalating,” Jim concurred.

“Then you agree that your father should take the same precautions.”

“I do, yes. But my dad, Simon he’s not exactly easily swayed. This is his home, and he’s going to be stubborn about it.”

“Yeah, can’t really imagine your father having those attributes,” Simon replied with a healthy dose of sarcasm in his voice. “Look, Jim, I’ll have Brown talk to him, but you’re our best bet here.”

“Me? My father and I aren’t exactly close. If he doesn’t want to leave, I don’t think that anything I say is going to change his mind.”

“Talk to him. You’re his son, and he wants to get to know you. He’ll listen.”

“You don’t know…”

“Jim, I’m a father. You’re not, so let me give you a little hint. There isn’t much that a father won’t do for his son if he has at least one decent bone in his body. So just go in there and ask,” Simon interrupted.

Know an order when he heard one, Jim turned around without another word and walked back into his father’s sitting room.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“There isn’t much that a mother won’t do for her child, you know? I’m not really sure where that leaves you, kiddo,” Blair mumbled against the fabric covered bump that had been his companion for the past few months.

The Bump, as he called it, hadn’t been his sole companion. In fact, The Bump hadn’t even existed when he’d first been dumped in the pit of hell that he currently resided in. No, his first fellow prisoner had been a pathetic soul named John.

Their meeting had been one of the most unusual that Blair had ever experienced. The only other man that had ever seen him puke his guts out had been Jim. And, well, Jim’s kindness had only extended so far as fetching a glass of water and leaving him alone while his stomach turned itself inside out. He’d never held his hair back and tried to keep him upright while his intestines tried to escape through his esophagus.

But, as Blair had found out, John was a much gentler soul than Jim was which made it worse because the guy had been one of the nicest people that he’d ever met. He really didn’t deserve to have his life ended the way that it had been. Not that Jim would’ve even remotely deserved John’s fate, but it just seemed excessively cruel to take so gentle a soul and make such a horrible mess of the end of his life.

Blair shook his head to clear it for a moment. He’d developed a habit of letting his thoughts wander aimlessly over the last few months. It was a penchant that he could ill afford, but it was a tempting one. Ones' imagination, after all, could go anywhere, and his imagination very much wanted to be anywhere but where it was.

“So kiddo, when you were just a couple of cells in a petri dish on that table over there, a guy named John used to sleep on this bed. He was a great guy you know? He was an accountant. Yeah, I know, they’re close to lawyers, but I said accountant, not auditor. He was engaged to this girl named Alyssa. He gave me her picture before he died. She’s kind of nondescript, but John thought the world of her. He asked me to pass a message along to her if I ever get out of here, but he doesn’t want me telling her what happened to him.”

Blair paused and stared at the far wall for a moment before continuing. “I don’t think that I can figure out a way to do that. For one, I’m not sure we’re getting out of here. Sorry, I know that as the adult I’m supposed to be the strong one, but I’ve got to say that I’ve lost touch with my inner optimist here. And… God how the hell do I hide what happened if I do get out?”

“I appreciate your efforts to communicate with the fetus, Mr. Sandburg, but perhaps you should choose a more uplifting topic? Children shouldn’t be subjugated to such darkness so early in their life cycle,” a voice echoed into the room through the speakers hidden in the ceiling.

Blair didn’t respond to the intrusion of the voice. Instead he placed a shaky hand on the protruding stomach in front of his nose and gave it a reassuring rub.

“You’ll be happy to know that your increased interaction with the fetus has encouraged additional activity within the womb. This quite a good sign, I was getting concerned that I might have to find another donor.”

Blair’s hand involuntarily tightened into a fist before he forced it back into an open position.

“You’re being stubborn today.” A hint of disapproval entered into the disembodied voice.

Blair winced but forced his mouth open, his mind racing furiously for something inoffensive to say. It might go against his nature to be the beaten and submissive captive, but he sure as hell didn’t want to end up in the same position that John had.

“Just trying to be normal for the kid.”

A derisive snort answered him, but the subject seemed to be dropped in favor of a new one. “You haven’t been eating all of your food.”

“Haven’t been all that hungry,” Blair lied easily. They had slipped John drugs through his food, and when the other man had gotten to the point where his insides could no longer keep anything solid down, they’d hooked him up to bags and all manner of tubes. He had no doubt that they would do the same to him. So he walked a fine line of eating enough not to starve and hoping that he wasn’t eating enough to get the appropriate levels of chemicals into his system. That, of course, was assuming they were trying to drug him at all.

“You don’t have to lie to me, Mr. Sandburg. While others might have doubted your intelligence a time or two, I have not. But play your game if you must. I’ve already told you; my plans for you are not the ones I had for John.”

Yeah. Right. He’d believe that when he saw it.

“ Ahhh, the silent treatment? How trite. Perhaps I should fill you in on what I’ve been up to then? I’ve just sent a lovely house warming gift to an acquaintance of yours…”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Preliminary tests show that it’s fresh unlike the last package. That means that the perpetrator has to be within a certain distance of Cascade.” Serena’s voice sounded distorted as she filled Henri in on her findings. Of course, that could be because Jim was eavesdropping on their conversation from two floors above.

“JIM!” Simon’s bark nearly shocked the sentinel into a zone.

“Yeah, Simon?”

“Have I or have I not instructed you to stay out of that case?”

“I wasn’t…”

“Detective Ellison, do I look stupid to you? I know that particular constipated Neanderthal look means you’re using your senses. And I haven’t been sitting in a captain’s chair so long that I’ve forgotten how to put clues together.”

“I…”

“You are to stay out of that investigation. Especially now that you’re actually involved.”

Jim grudgingly nodded in response. Simon’s decree was both a sound and smart one. Even if it bothered Jim that he was being kept out of the loop, they couldn’t let the sick bastard get off on a technicality should Henri actually be able to catch him.

It had been difficult to have his father move into the loft. Jim had long since passed the stage of life where he wanted to live with his father, and ironically enough, he monitored his behavior far more around his own parent than he ever had around Naomi.

But the sentinel in him had insisted that the loft was a much more secure place than his childhood home, so he’d packed up the old man and dragged him off to his personal territory for protection. Which was all well and good until he’d realized that he couldn’t exactly ask his own father to sleep on the couch for an indefinite amount of time. He’d literally been standing at the threshold of Blair’s room, his father’s suitcase, in hand when he become conscious of the fact that he still couldn’t bear to make it a spare room again.

So he sent his father upstairs and crammed his own frame into the small room night after night.

Things had settled in from that point for a couple of months. While there were still residual issues between them on a personal level, they were intensely compatible on a living space level. They were both tidy, quiet, and very aware of personal space. Truthfully, Jim was amazed at how clean his father was. It made him wonder why he’d kept Sally on after he and Steven left the house. There certainly wasn’t a need for her to be there as his father turned out to be a fairly adept cook and certainly had no problem taking on his share of household chores.

Maybe it was just the social status she provided. Having a housekeeper certainly buffs up a corporate image. Or maybe his father was just plain lonely for companionship. For somebody that would voice a different opinion, for somebody that would wake him up in the middle of the night with his incessant scribb…

In any case, things had slowly settled into a pattern of work, quiet dinners and silent yet companionable TV watching in the evenings. The only disruption to either Ellison’s life had been the occasional nightmare. William’s of finding a dismembered body part, Jim’s of finding a note.

Without his volition, Jim’s hand began to creep to the wallet that held that note, the last thing that he’d ever received from Blair. The culmination of his worst fears put on paper. The words that informed him that he and his lifestyle had finally pushed the anthropologist past his breaking point. How Blair didn’t think he could survive staying with Jim, but didn’t think he could say goodbye in person because he knew that Jim would want him to stay.

How he’d always carry Jim in his heart as his best friend, but probably wouldn’t ever be able to come back because he had to choose between being himself and being there for Jim, and he wasn’t sure that he’d be selfish enough to choose himself again.

As always, Jim was amazed at the sharp stab of pain that thinking about the note gave him. Time was supposed to heal all wounds, or at least dull the pain, but it certainly wasn’t working its cure-all magic on Jim’s heart. 

His father moving in had at least provided an escape from the never ending reminders of Blair’s absence, and Jim had been thankful for the respite. Despite the issues that he had with his parent, having him around gave Jim something else to focus on other than work. As the other option had been dragging some poor woman into yet another dysfunctional relationship, he was at least content with the solution that fate had provided.

That was, of course, until he’d come home from work to find a vial of blood taped to his front door.

Fresh blood if what he’d heard was accurate. Not fresh frozen like the arm that his father had been gifted with. He’d sniffed around the area while waiting for his fellow officers to arrive, but the only thing that he’d been able to find was the barest hint of a familiar scent. Familiar from where though, he wasn’t certain.

What he was certain of was that forensics wasn’t going to find anything on the tape or the vial that was going to provide any information beyond what the DNA test was going to yield on the blood itself. And that was certain to be something that the psycho who was leaving the stuff would want them to know.

Of course the big question was, what did this guy want them to know? So far there were two drop offs and no other messages. Without any additional information, Jim knew that the investigation had to be stalling out. All the physical evidence in the world could prove nothing if you didn’t have any idea about why the evidence was there.

Blood, when it came down to it, was just blood. Without any relationship to anything else, it was pretty meaningless.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“You know, I always figured I’d be a great stepfather. Having a biological child was pretty meaningless, you know? Blood is just blood. It is how you feel about that little kid that is important,” Blair mumbled against The Bump.

“You pick the strangest topics to discuss with that child.”

Blair glanced over his shoulder in surprise. “What are you doing down here?”

“It’s my lab. Why shouldn’t I be down here?”

“You only come down on Thursdays. Otherwise you’re always looming over me from the observation window.”

“Yes, well you are attentive; aren’t you? Tell me, how are you telling time without any outside indicators?”

“I count,” Blair replied evasively.

“Indeed. Then tell me this, why do you refer to Melanie by her name, but not me?”

“My mom taught me to address women like actual people. Can’t help it that I’m not able to break the habit. Besides she likes puppies, there’s a chance she still has a soul in there somewhere, unlike you.”

“No soul? I’m doing work for an undermined and repressed group of people, and you accuse me of having no soul?”

“I don’t think those people would ever support what you did to John let alone what you did to Susan or Michaela or Jenny here.” Blair replied with a point of his chin towards the other end of the bed from where The Bump was situated.

“Sacrifices must be made for the greater good. It wasn’t long ago that students had to rob graves in order to understand the human body. Without their work how far behind would we be in our medical knowledge?”

“Those students didn’t kill those people.”

“And I wouldn’t have had to either if it weren’t for William Ellison and his associates! I was brilliant, brilliant, and everybody knew it! But my research was too controversial, so they made an excuse of me being unstable. They are hypocrites and bigots. They are the ones who deserve your wrath.”

Blair didn’t respond, but laid his head back down against The Bump.

“Ah, see, even the great Blair Sandburg can’t refute me when confronted with the facts! I should’ve been heralded as the cutting edge scientist that I am. Instead I’ll have to resign myself to a posthumous glory. A man who persevered in his quest for medical knowledge by doing unspeakable crimes because the mainstream society couldn’t accept him for what he was.”

Blair closed his eyes and tried to block the rhetoric out. He’d heard it often enough when he’d first been taken. John had been naive enough to think that he could talk reason with an insane man. He couldn’t, but he’d tried anyway. Still, John’s constant attempts to bring sanity had brought out some pertinent information should Blair ever find a way to contact the authorities to pass that information along.

The doctor had at one point been a researcher for a joint venture that had been owned by William Ellison’s and four other men’s companies. After his colleagues had complained about his dubious ethics and testing methods that bordered on torture, he’d been let go with a very small severance package. Business being business, word quickly traveled that he was unstable and soon he’d ended up having his license to practice medicine revoked.

Fortunately for the good doctor, the criminal element was very willing to fund his research in exchange for a few medical services. Stitching up henchmen, small cosmetic surgeries, designer drugs: if he couldn’t do it for you, he knew who could and for a small finder’s fee he could set you up with the right people. Blair could honestly admit that if the doctor was actually sane, he’d be an absolute genius.

Of course, he wasn’t sane. After all, sane people don’t kidnap random strangers so that they can perform experiments on them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Are you sure about this Jimmy?” William Ellison’s voice was filled with doubt, and Jim all of a sudden had a taste of how Blair must have felt whenever he tried to get him to try something different.

“The case is at a dead end. The DNA in the sample isn’t yielding anything useful. The PD can’t find anything if there isn’t another sample to match it to. If I can focus in on the scent and figure out why it's familiar, I could give Henri another lead. It beats sitting around here waiting for another gift.”

William nodded once, but turned a skeptical eye towards the candles sitting out on the coffee table. They were candles that Blair had left behind in his haste to rid his life of one James J. Ellison – Sentinel. Blair had also left behind his meditation music, but Jim couldn’t quite bring himself to put that on. It would only conjure memories of Blair, and he didn’t need any assistance in that area.

“I’ll just, I’ll go out for a bit. Give you some time alone. You need anything from the store?” William asked nervously.

“No, Dad. I’m fine. Remember to take your cell phone. And stay near a security camera at all times when you’re in the store.”

“I received the warning message the first time, Jimmy. No need to remind me.” William’s tone would’ve been a touch sarcastic if not for the small, indulgent smile that was on his lips.

Jim just smiled and nodded sharply in response. He acknowledged the sentiment that any further exposition on the subject was unnecessary and unwanted. He waited until he heard the click of the door being closed before centering in on the candles flickering unsteadily in front of him. He’d have to check the balcony door for gaps along the frame; he shouldn't have that much air movement in the loft. But that could wait until later.

Taking a deep breath he conjured a mental voice that wasn’t Blair’s but was close enough that it would guide him into his own special form of meditation.


	2. Chapter 2

Blair slowly counted the heartbeats that he could hear through the skin that held The Bump so safely out of the real world. He knew it wasn’t actually The Bump’s pulse that he heard, but he tried his best to pretend that it was. Contemplating the truth of the situation was an unbearable option. 

He tried to block out the rest of the world and just focus in on the rhythm of the pulse underneath his ear. It wasn’t as soothing as his tribal meditation music or as focusing as his candles, but he certainly didn’t have either of those at his disposal, so he had to make do with what he had.

It was his one respite from his life as a lab rat, or should he say his life as a cosmic puppet? That’s what John had taken to referring to them as when the doctor had objected to calling themselves lab rats. Apparently it was an affront to the serious nature of his work. So John had started calling them the cosmic puppets. It had been amusing or amusing as you could find anything when you were being held prisoner in a windowless room for months on end.

The soft tumbling of the lock on the door let Blair know that he would soon have company. He forced his spine into the straightest line that he could manage. Even though he was under constant surveillance, and his captors had to see everything he did, he still liked to present a sturdy presence when he was actually face to face with one of them. He didn’t think that it fooled anyone, but it gave him some semblance of pride and dignity.

“Ready for your shave and haircut, Mr. Sandburg? Given your current economic circumstances I’ll wave the customary two bits fee.” Melanie’s husky, feminine voice announced who exactly had opened the door.

After John had tried killing himself when left alone with a safety razor, all grooming rituals were observed by one of the doctor’s associates, or as Blair liked to call them – goons. Melanie was the doctor’s favorite. While the others were purely muscled thugs, she was the one with wiles and brains to match her toned physique.

It was what had attracted Jim to her in the first place.

“Melanie, how’s the man hunting these days?” Blair greeted sarcastically.

The tall brunette ignored him, and he didn’t particularly care. She’d never paid him any attention, not even back when she’d been playing the doting girlfriend to Jim. If only he’d paid more attention to that attitude back then, maybe he would’ve ferreted her out before she’d been able to accomplish her mission.

He watched as she wordlessly began to unpack the carry case the she’d brought with her. This, of course, didn’t mean that she didn’t say anything. She said plenty with how she slowly unpacked the clippers and left them just dangling at the edge of the small, bolted down table that rested in the room.

It was a deviously simple way of saying much more than any trite phrase or witty taunt.

The long, unwrapped cord was a dare. It could easily be used as a weapon against her if Blair was imprudent enough to try his luck with attempting to strangle his captor. He wasn’t a foolish man though. He knew enough to know that he had no idea what was on the other side of that door, and he knew that whatever else she might be, Melanie was a professional. He really didn’t think that she’d come into a room and pick a fight that she had any doubt about winning.

Of course, the clippers also told him exactly how much of a captive he was. How he had no choice over his personal grooming habits anymore.

What she didn’t know was that those clippers told a third story. It was one of hope, scant as it may be. Because as long as they felt the need to keep shaving his head, they still felt that he was enough of a threat to continue their attempts at subjugation.

At least, that was what he told himself, and he wasn’t going to change his story this late in the game.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“You’re sure about this?” Simon’s tone was doubtful, and Jim fought the impulse to incredulously parrot the question back to his superior.

“Simon, you of all people know what I can do.” He hissed through his teeth instead.

“Yeah, but Jim, that was when…”

“I don’t need Blair Sandburg around to, to pull out a card trick that he taught me. It’s the same perfume. I’m sure of it.”

“Why would an ex-girlfriend be dropping of these sorts of packages for your father?”

“I don’t know. It isn’t my job to figure out, remember? Besides it may not be her. I just remember the way the perfume smelled. Which tells you that the delivery person, at least, is probably a female. There aren’t that many guys out there that would wear that flowery of a perfume.”

“It could’ve just been a coincidence. Maybe your ex had stopped by earlier, got cold feet and left,” Simon argued.

“Well that would be one hell of a coincidence now wouldn’t it? Even if it does turn out to be one, you and I both know that H has next to no leads on this thing, and it has all the earmarks of a crime that is probably going to escalate. No offense, but I don’t want to be living with my father for the rest of my life, and I don’t think that he wants to be looking over his shoulder all the time either.”

“I know, I know, but think of how this is going to look to anybody else. That scent had to have been faint, and we’re relying on your memory here when you’re a very personally involved witness.”

“And if we don’t tell H? Then what, Simon? We wait until this nut job leaves a package of intestines strung across the hood of my truck? We wait until those intestines are my father’s, and I come home to find him dead on the sofa?”

“Sandburg taught you to be too melodramatic.”

Jim’s eyes narrowed in acknowledgement of the hit that Simon scored, but he didn’t back down.

“All right, I’ll tell Brown about your memory. You know I can’t promise anything though.”

“I know. Just look into it. That’s all I’m asking.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I’d just like to see another Jags game, you know? That’s all I ask. It isn’t that I don’t want other things, or that I don’t want more important things, but I’d just like to be able to see another game.”

Blair paused and looked off in the distance for a moment before starting to talk again. “Did I ever tell you about the time that Jim and I saved the team? Actually, I don’t mean to brag, but technically we saved them twice.”

“ENOUGH ALREADY! All you do day in and out is talk to that thing!” Melanie shrieked.

“Thought that was what I was supposed to do.” Blair replied calmly.

“Are you deranged or something? You’re locked in a room with a, a…”

“A pregnant woman?” Blair supplied.

Melanie rolled her eyes and stalked over to him and dug her fingernails into the nape of his neck as she forced his head away from its resting place by The Bump and dragged it towards the head of the bed. With her other hand, she yanked away the small tented sheet that usually rested there exposing a twisted mass of flesh that was haggardly supported by what used to be a skull.

“You call that a woman?” She asked coldly as she shoved his face closer to the gnarled lumps of scar tissue. “That’s a two for one burger special at Dave’s on Tuesdays.”

With a final push that brought Blair’s nose in contact with the repugnant flesh, she let go of her captive and stood back, arms crossed to stare at him.

Tentatively, Blair reached and trailed his fingertips along the breathing tube that was jammed between what was left of a lower lip and a gap where front teeth used to reside.

“Yes, I call her a woman. A very brave one. Jenny didn’t cry for her life, but she held the others and cried for them as they were led to their slaughter. I would be a monster to call her anything less than a woman, because she was so much more,” he answered softly.

“She was living out of a bus when we found her!” Melanie scoffed even though her brash words seemed tinged with doubt.

Blair shrugged and gently tugged the sheet back into its regular resting place. “And where you live makes you a better person? It somehow atones for doing this to Jenny and all those other girls? It makes up for what you let that madman do to John?”

Silence reigned for a moment, and Blair dared to look over his shoulder at his guard. “I think that she’s more of a woman than you are, even when she’s nothing but an empty shell that lives on this slab.”

He expected the slap, he didn’t expect the tears. Hers or his own.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Can’t say that I expected this,” Henri commented at he stared at the body sprawled at his feet.

“You should’ve,” Rafe replied as he stepped over the body to get a view from the other side.

“How’s that?”

Rafe shrugged and crouched down. “It’s Ellison. Weird stuff happens around him, to him and through him. You should’ve been expecting trouble the moment the captain told you about that perfume.”

“Her background check came out clean!” Henri protested.

“Which Ellison told you because he ran one before he ever started dating her. Still doesn’t exempt anybody from the Ellison law of statistics. The man’s been in enough shoot-outs to fill the quota for three police departments.”

“So I was supposed to expect that because he recognized a brand of perfume that an ex used to wear, that we’d find the woman in her apartment with the back of her skull blown off because she put a shotgun in her mouth?” Henri asked incredulously.

“Well, not that exactly. I was betting on Ellison having knocked her up, she gave birth to a stillborn baby and was sending him gory bits of herself and the kid because she blamed him.” 

“Rafe, man, that is just plain nasty and gross. You been watching those indy films again?”

“You’ve got to admit that it isn’t that farfetched a theory given that Jim is involved.”

“The girl had no criminal record or record of psychosis that we could see. Hell, Jim checked her out before he even started dating her. Why would I think that she was, was…” Henri trailed of as he gestured as the projected bits of gore that were splattered around the room. “And don’t say that I should’ve because Ellison is involved.”

“Why would I say it? You just did,” Rafe shot back with a jaunty smile.

Henri rolled his eyes in response and pointed his finger at his fellow detective. “Enough talking. Help me look for a suicide note, would ya?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Blair had to admit he didn’t expect the slap. Or the push. By the time the punch to his guts rolled around though, he expected that. On the bright side, his assailant didn’t seem to be gunning for any groin shots, so he could at least be grateful for that. 

From his position on the floor he peered up at his attacker and could make out enough features to recognize two facts: his attacker was a man and his attacker was not Melanie. Or was that the same fact interpreted differently? The blows rained down and the thought evaporated from his mind. The beating continued for a few minutes - long enough to ensure that he was bleeding in a couple of places and in a couple of days would be able to claim kinship with every skin color of the planet because his bruises would be that spectacular.

Then, as suddenly as the attack had started, it ended and a different hand shoved a couple of sheets of paper in his face. 

“Look at this! Look at this suicide note! What did you do to her?” The doctor’s voice shrieked in his ears.

Numbly, Blair grabbed the papers and adjusted them so that his eyes would focus on the small font. Apparently Melanie had a lot to say before she offed herself, and most of it was highly incriminating. 

“We barely got out of there before the cops showed up. If I hadn’t, if things had been different… Do you realize what you could’ve done? You could’ve jeopardized all of this because you had to play your little mind games with her!” the doctor ranted, as Blair flipped through the letter.

Absently he noted that the paper was printed on both sides. Riddled with guilt, Melanie had wanted to minimize the impact her death would have on the world. Apparently that included saving the environment by using as little paper as possible.

“She was my right hand, my messenger! I could never have asked for a more loyal and understanding… and you, YOU had to go and mess with her head!”

Had the diatribe come earlier in Bair’s life, he would’ve laughed or taunted the mad man by pointing out the illogical nature of his statements. But as he’d much prefer to keep his face intact and his body natural, he kept quiet.

“You will not speak to the new guards! Do you hear me? If you so much as breathe a word at them, I will pluck off a part of your body for each syllable. Starting with your fingernails and working up to your penis.”

Blair nodded once, oddly unaffected by the threat. He didn’t need to talk to the goons, after all. Besides, his lack of resistance to the doctor’s edicts would hopefully mean that they wouldn’t escalate. He’d seen what the man was capable of in the name of research; he didn’t really want to think about what he could do if he was focused on pure torture.

“You disgust me!” The doctor spat at him before turning and striding out the door, followed by the muscled buffoon who had so graciously given Blair his latest beating.

Blair, though, didn’t spare time for a thought about the irony of him disgusting so vile a person. He was much too busy folding Melanie's forgotten suicide letter into as small a square as he could and hiding it away. He kept his back to where he believed one set of cameras to be and angled his body to shadow over the hand that held the note. If there was one thing that he’d learned from observing Jim, it was that perception and observation were more important than the actual senses sometimes. A person watching a security camera was no different.

Or so he hoped. 

 


	3. Chapter 3

William ran his fingertips methodically back and forth across the spotless kitchen counter. He was torn inside because on the one hand he was Jimmy Ellison’s father. On the other hand, he’d been a pretty subpar father based on what Stevie and Jimmy had told him, so he wasn’t sure if he had the right to say anything to his eldest. Back on the other hand though, did he have a moral obligation as Jimmy’s father to say something even if it wouldn’t be received well?

He hated thinking introspectively. Always had. He was an action man by nature; debating things within himself wasn’t his favorite pastime.

When Jim emerged from the tiny room under the stairs, William knew that his time for dithering was over.

“Dad,” Jim greeted in a half wake murmur, “you’re up early.”

“Made coffee.”

“Good, good.”

“Say, Jimmy? Don’t you think you’d be more comfortable upstairs? I know that I’m older, but I don’t chase crooks for a living either. Maybe you need to get some better sleep.”

That sounded halfway normal to William’s ears. It sounded like a concerned father, which he was, but it didn’t in anyway reference the fact that pining over your roommate for long periods of time was probably unhealthy.

Jim glared at him sullenly in response, and for a second it was like he was transported back in time to Jim’s teenage years. Obviously he was losing his touch and intimating things. Either that or Jimmy was just really, really good at seeing through smoke screens because of his detective work.

William liked the second theory better. He could at least take paternal pride in it that way.

Deciding to push his luck with Jim’s unresponsiveness, William opened his mouth again and said, “Actually I’m thinking about moving back home anyway.”

“WHAT?”

“Now, Jimmy, I know that you’re a police officer, but that certainly didn’t stop that person from leaving a message on your doorstep anymore than mine.”

“Dad, look, this person is going to escalate. No, I can’t be here all the time, but if you’re here… there are a lot more people close by that you could run to for help should something happen. And he will escalate eventually. These guys always do unless they’re caught first or killed.”

“I know. That’s one of the reasons that I’m thinking about going back. This person is coming after me, and if he ‘escalates’ I’d rather not have you get in the way and get hurt.”

Jim bristled and glared at his father. “I’m trained to handle these kinds of situations.”

“And I’m a father… I know you’re capable. Hell, anybody with a newspaper subscription in Cascade knows that, but I’m supposed to want the best for you. I don’t expect you to understand…”

“Don’t. Just don’t try to play the concerned parent card here,” Jim fairly growled.

“I’m not playing any card, Jimmy. I’m telling you straight out that this whole arrangement isn’t healthy for you. Now in case you have it in that brilliant head of yours that I’m pretending to be some sort of martyr to assuage my own guilt in my parenting faults, I can come right out and tell you that the person making you most miserable right now is…”

“Me. I know.” Jim cut in with a calm voice that had just a touch of boredom in it.

“No. Blair Sandburg.” William shot back in the same cold tone that he’d developed for giving bad news to his business partners. If it was going to hurt anyway, you might as well get straight to the point.

Jim hissed as if he’d been sucker punched, but he didn’t say anything in response.

William took a deep breath and decided to throw caution to the wind. “Did you really think that I was so blind about what's going on with you? Good God, you wouldn’t let me move a stack of books the other day. And don’t think you’re going to lie to me and say that those were yours. They had words in them that I’m not sure that I’d know how to look up in the dictionary let alone pronounce. You mope, you snarl, and… and you mutter his name in your sleep so often that it breaks my heart.”

“I don’t.” Jim denied his father’s assertions with little conviction.

“You do, and if I have to move out of here so that you quit going to sleep each night being surrounded by him… my life isn’t more important than your life.”

“And a few nightmares are hardly going to ruin my life. This psycho could sure as hell ruin yours. Are you insane?”

“No, I’m trying to point out that you’re using me as an excuse to not deal with the fact that the man you were in love with left you.”

“I wasn’t… Sandburg was just my friend.”

“Oh for God’s sake, I’m not stupid! Not all those midnight mutterings are nightmares.”

“You’re hearing things!” Jim denied.

“The only thing I am, young man, is completely baffled about why the hell you let him leave you.”

“He said he needed to go! What was I supposed to do? Huh, Dad? Track him down against his explicit wishes and force him to live a life he was terrified of? Because that worked so well with Mom, now didn’t it?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. That little bastard pinned it all on you in that note. He took his problems and blamed them on you. ‘Losing his self identity.’ That’s a complete load of hogwash, Jimmy, and you bought it hook, line, and sinker. So yeah, I’d rather that you track that son of a bitch down and make him say goodbye the right way, because you’re the one suffering here. Do you think that the little bastard is off feeling bad about this right now? No. He’s off discovering himself every night with a different girl!”

William had to admit that he was surprised at how fast his son moved. One moment he was standing in the kitchen, the next he was slammed against the refrigerator door with Jim’s hands fisted firmly in his shirt.

“You. Do. Not. Know. The. First. Thing. About. Him.”

“Except that you love him,” William supplied with a knowing smirk.

The color drained from Jim’s face for a moment and his jaw dropped a fraction of an inch in surprise. With a gentler push, he shoved himself away from his father and stalked over to the other end of the kitchen.

“You baited me,” he accused, “you baited me, and I fell for it.”

“Well, don’t feel bad. I’ve had years of practice at it. You don’t make it as far as I did in life without learning which buttons to push.”

Jim sighed and stared sightlessly at the windowed door that separated the living room from the balcony. Summoning some of the vaunted Ellison courage, William reached out and put his hand gently on Jim’s arm, not surprised when he felt his son’s muscles twitch in a controlled flinch.

“You need to find him. Put an end to your misery one way or the other. I’m not saying that I like the guy for doing this to you, for putting his faults on your shoulders, but I’m not the one living your life. I can admit that now. But I do still have parental responsibility for you, even if I did screw that up for most of your life.”

“It isn’t that simple,” Jim stated flatly, not bothering to avert his gaze from the nothingness that he was staring at.

“Maybe it will be. You never know if you don’t try.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Nothing is ever simple.” The doctor complained as he roughly tugged a suture through another laceration, grimacing at the unevenness of the cut that had result from the corner of the table catching Blair’s head as he fell. “Why do you persist in talking to the guards? Are you secretly a masochist? Because if you are, I need to know.”

Blair ignored him and the rough pull of the thread as it slid through his skin. The new ‘guards’ had been instructed to punish him should he start to speak with them. That little order was a tailor made way to divert their attention away from the suicide letter that Blair had tucked away. The instant that their inspections got close to the note’s hiding place, he’d start in with whatever random bit of conversation he could muster, and they’d be handily distracted from finding something that they didn’t know they were looking for.

While he was under surveillance, he very much doubted that they paid attention to his every move anymore. Several months worth of time would’ve made them a little more lax in their observation of him. That and the doctor obviously hadn’t realized that he was missing that note. Or maybe he knew and didn’t care.

Of course, it would be fairly easy to find out the location of that letter should the doctor ever decide to look for it. The cameras that recorded Blair’s antiseptic prison would no doubt have his every moment available to review. Looked at in that way, he supposed that it didn’t make much sense that he take such pains to hide something that would be so easily uncovered should there ever actually be a question about it.

But there was a small amount of pride left in him that argued that hiding something, anything, from his captor was like holding on to a part of himself. The words weren’t anything like a true book to read, and in truth he had never read more than those few paltry lines that day when it was first tossed at him. Yet it was still a forbidden item, and one that would provide ample evidence for the police should he ever escape.

As always, thoughts of the police brought about an aching stab to his gut. He’d been so sure that Jim would find him. All those months ago he’d been convinced that it was only a matter of time before Jim came charging in on his big white horse, leading the cavalry to rescue Sandburg as normal. Hell, he’d even convinced John of it. After the first three months, he’d finally given up on that hope.

“Why me?” he asked as the doctor began poking at the bruised flesh that was causing Blair’s eye to swell shut. “I mean, I know why me, I just… Why not Jim? It’s his father that you’re trying to get even with, and you didn’t exactly have any compunctions about taking John to get back at his father.”

“Parents are hurt more if you hurt them through their children. Lovers are hurt more if you hurt them through their partners. Taking you away from Jim Ellison would wound him far more than anything I could ever physically do to him. I like to think of you as my stone that killed two birds.”

“We weren’t like that.” Blair protested.

“No, you weren’t. But Jim certainly wanted you to be. Did you know that I almost left you there? He was bound to make a pass at you eventually, and your polite refusal would’ve put him in such a world of pain… But I couldn’t be absolutely certain that you’d say ‘no.’ Were you less of a… hippie, I would’ve more seriously considered it.”

The doctor paused for a moment to grab a bottle of disinfectant to wipe over some abraded skin on the side of Blair’s face.

“Of course, I also might’ve left you there if you weren’t so fastidious in keeping your seed unfertile. Alas, you’re quite the boy scout, more than your dear friend Jim anyway. I’d have figured you for the irresponsible one that went for quickies with a condom that didn’t have a spermicide in it. I guess that means that my ability to judge a person’s character still needs some work, doesn’t it?”

Blair’s eyes strayed over to the table where The Bump still resided in its fleshy life support system.

He chose not to answer the doctor.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jim rubbed his eyes and tried his best not to eavesdrop on the quiet conversation that Henri was having on the telephone. All of his cop instincts told him that Henri’s ‘urgent’ call from the Seattle police had something to do with William Ellison’s case, but he couldn’t afford to have Simon catch him getting the inside scoop - not if he wanted to continue getting by with using police department resources to try to find one Blair Sandburg.

Not that he was getting anywhere with said resources. For a guy as vibrant as Sandburg, he sure had dropped off the face of the earth. A tense phone call to Naomi had left him without any leads as her son had apparently sent a note to her explaining that he needed to find his way again. She was still ‘processing’ her feelings of anger towards Jim for hurting her baby boy.

“Jim.” Simon’s voice carried clearly across the bullpen, and Jim was surprised to see that he was being beckoned towards Henri’s desk.

Quickly, he stood and crossed the floor. “Yeah, Simon?”

“Does your father know a Goddard Simonson?” Henri asked softly.

“Not that I know of, but Dad knows a lot of people that I’m not acquainted with. Why?”

Simon shifted uncomfortably. “We were just hoping to spare him some pain if we could. The Seattle police have a mail fraud case that might be related to your father’s.”

“Mail fraud?”

Henri glanced at Simon and after receiving a curt nod he filled Jim in, “They had a guy that was stealing mail from people’s doorsteps. He’d been laid off from his job and had the bright idea that he could steal packages and sell what was inside for some spare cash. He took a package from this Simonson’s place, but when he opened it, it had a half-thawed uterus on the inside. Guy freaked and turned himself in saying that God was punishing him for his thievery.”

At Henri’s pause, Simon stepped in. “It gets worse. The DNA from the uterus itself isn’t coming up with any matches, but the blood that was covering it matched Simonson’s son. He’d gone missing last year just before his wedding. The police originally thought it was just a case of cold feet, but when he didn’t show up…”

“And you think that the cases might be related. Which means you think that I might be a potential victim for this guy,” Jim filled in.

“Jim…”

“I can take care of myself, Simon.”

“I know that. I just want you to be careful. You’ve got a good history for getting yourself into some bad situations.”

“Yeah, well if I get into another one, I also have a good history of getting out of them.”

“I’m well aware of your abilities, Detective.” Simon replied with a soft emphasis on the word ‘abilities’ as if Jim couldn’t draw his own conclusions about what a person who sent gory packages to people could do to a sentinel.

A tense silence fell when Jim didn’t respond, and Simon didn’t say anything further.

Henri cleared his throat after a bit and asked, “Hey, Jim, man – you know which office your father is at today? I need to ask him a few questions.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“That doesn’t make any sense,” William protested, “I haven’t seen Goddard in years. Stevie was still in diapers when I last spoke to him.”

“I understand, Mr. Ellison, but you do know him?” Henri asked for clarification purposes.

“Yes, but strictly in a business capacity. He was a medical researcher. The company that I worked for at the time was going in on a joint venture for a new pharmaceutical division. It was years ago. I never received any threats, nothing.”

“Can you tell me what exactly you did with Mr. Simonson?”

“Dr. Simonson,” William corrected, “he was sort of a medical liaison between the researchers and the businessmen of his company. It’s why he was assigned to the project with me. They felt that he’d be able to make the project work better.”

“Did it?” Henri asked as he scribbled down a few more notes.

“Yes. It wasn’t an outstanding success, but it was good. Profitable. There was hardly any fuss over anything. The venture was set-up within a matter of months. The funding wasn’t that difficult to get once Simonson and I got the plan together for our companies. Although… there was a member of the staff that several of the researchers complained about to me. He wasn’t in the pharmaceutical division, so I didn’t pay much attention to him at first.”

“But you did later?” Henri prompted when William fell silent.

“Well… you have to understand Detective, it was a much different time in business. There weren’t the laws that there are today. It made getting rid of unsavory employees a bit easier.”

“You had somebody’s position eliminated with the use of a discriminatory practice?”

“No, no nothing like that. Several of the researchers felt uncomfortable about a Dr. Sibille. They questioned his ethics. Seemed he had a fondness for the lab rats that he shouldn’t have. The things that he was doing to them and the pleasure he got from it… Eventually the complaints got so frequent that I was worried it was going to compromise the venture. Simonson agreed, so we arranged for his job to be eliminated by a small restructuring. He was given a good severance package though, and he never said one thing to me.”

“Can you think of anybody else or any other situations that would’ve involved both of you?”

“No, nothing. You don’t think that Dr. Sibille is doing this, do you Detective? Why would he go so many years without saying a word if he was that upset?” William asked with disbelief coloring his voice.

Henri smiled politely at the elder Ellison and shook his head, “I’m sorry Mr. Ellison, I can’t discuss the details or theories I have about the case…”

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Blair had once held the theory that if he went to enough crime scenes with Jim, he’d lose his ability to hurl at the sight of blood. His stomach was currently informing him that he was mistaken.

Instead of his customary perch, he was seated on the floor, in a corner of the room with his hands cuffed behind his back. In front of him, a burly guard was standing, the minute shifting of his weight informing Blair that the guy wasn’t as impassive to the scene that was playing out any more than Blair was.

It was quite the crowded room compared to the way it normally was. The doctor might be mad, but his insanity did not extend over into foolish pride. He’d brought in another doctor, one that specialized in childcare for wealthy clients. She was tall, pale, and her brown eyes were devoid of any human compassion.

Blair wasn’t surprised. The woman patched up criminal’s kids for a living. You couldn’t pay him enough to believe that she didn’t have her fair share of abused kids that she fixed without every batting an eyelash.

He’d only seen her once before, but once was enough to cement his opinion of her being the coldest person he’d ever laid eyes on. There had been other doctors that had come for various reasons, but she was the only one who was trusted to come for an actual delivery. He couldn’t even remember that first day without the feeling of nausea and horror clawing at the back of his throat, and she hadn’t even flinched while it was happening.

She also didn’t have any compunction about continuing to work with the man that had engineered that bloody fiasco, as she was currently helping him excise whatever had been growing inside of Jenny’s body for the past months.

From his vantage point on the floor, Blair could see that the two of them had pulled back large flaps of skin in the abdominal area in what he assumed was an attempt to make the removal of the fetus easier. Why should they care about over exposing Jenny’s innards? It wasn’t as if they weren’t just going to shut the life support off the instant that the doctor’s experiment was removed from the womb anyway.

The smell of blood was cloying at him, but at least the smell of bile and excrement wasn’t mixed in with it this time. And Jenny had been brain dead for months so there were no screams of pain. Blair was oddly grateful for that. Because there were no screams of pain, he didn’t have to hear another voice actually break as John’s had.

God. He hoped whatever came out wasn’t going to look like the thing that they’d pulled from John’s body.

He shook his head and tried to focus on something else, but the scene was too familiar to keep the memories away.

The horror he’d felt the first time that he’d seen unnatural movement inside John’s skin. The way that the doctor had callously chained the other man to the bed when John’s mundane movements about the room had caused stress to the thing growing inside of him. The gut wrenching sound of pain when the anchor points that kept a womb stationary inside of a male body had given away and the small body in there had twisted John’s intestines around. The way that the doctor hadn’t even bothered properly anesthetizing John before cutting into him…

And he remembered the horribly malformed child that had emerged while John spasmed to death on that same operating table. The eyes were in the wrong place on the child’s face and the muscles had seemed garishly out of proportion in certain places. One arm had looked relatively normal while the other was longer and looked more like an adult’s arm than an infant’s.

He also recalled having to be restrained. He still wasn’t sure what he had hoped to accomplish by charging the doctor and yelling at him to help his friend. In truth, John had wanted to die long before his day actually arrived, and it was a feeling that Blair completely understood.

He’d been terrified that he would end up having the same fate as John. His fellow abductee had not been the first of the doctor’s experiments, but he had been the one that live the longest. He’d been the one that had almost come to term to deliver a living child. Actually, now that he thought about it, John actually had. The doctor was the one who had callously injected the malformed baby with drugs to kill it. Apparently, he didn’t have the facilities for long term care of an obviously special needs child.

Blair could still summon to mind the memory of waiting for two weeks while the doctor debated his options. The high levels of testosterone that a male carried were obviously still influencing the fetal development process, so he’d have to eliminate the source as the hormone replacement drugs were obviously not compensating.

Or so he’d told Blair when he’d been processing his thoughts and just needed an open ear.

Thankfully he had decided to attempt playing around with genetics and the outside influences instead. Blair’s relief at the proclamation was short lived when the steady stream of women had been lined up and shot in the head until one of the bodies actually stabilized on the life support machine.

Hell was too kind a word to describe what witnessing that had been like.

In comparison to the torture that John had been through and the terror that those poor, homeless women had been exposed to, Blair couldn’t really complain about being assigned to talk to the baby while it grew.

Why should he object? It was his son after all.

An unhappy squall brought Blair’s mind back to the scene currently being played out in front of him. The doctor was more jubilant than he’d ever seen him.

“I told you,” he crowed to the ice queen standing across the table from him, “I told you that the problem wasn’t in the genetic splicing. Just look at him!”

“He’s small,” she replied in a bored manner.

“Of course he’s small. My god, have you looked at where half his gene pool came from?”

Blair jerked his head up to glare at the void of feeling eyes that were appraising him. As the woman nodded her agreement to the doctor, Blair’s own eyes traveled to finally look at the child that the doctor was holding. As far as he could see, the baby looked normal, healthy even.

“Well, Papa,” the doctor said mockingly, “what are you going to name him?”

It was a thought that had bugged the back of his mind for months now. Not having been allowed access to any books or computers, he was left with his memory to provide names and their meanings. It had somewhat limited his options. On the other hand, the likelihood that either he or his son were going to live was somewhat unlikely, so it didn’t really matter that the name he was going to give him wasn’t the most attractive in the world. At least, Blair reasoned, he would have one.

“Mordecai,” he shot back to the doctor with as cocky a grin as he could manage after having been a prisoner for so long.

The doctor did not look pleased.


	4. Chapter 4

“The DNA match on the arm shows a very high probability that John Simonson was the father of the first package that was sent to Mr. Ellison. It ties the cases pretty closely together, but the Seattle PD has a possible abduction tied in with their case. If they push for control, I don’t think that we can deny them on it,” Henri informed his captain.

Simon shrugged and poured himself a cup of coffee. “So make certain that we stay on good terms with them so they don’t push. It isn’t like we’re closing in on this guy.”

“Simon?”

“H… You and I both know that if this guy held a grudge for this long he isn’t exactly going to push his hand. Hell, he didn’t even send threatening notes with his packages. Just address labels on paper that Wal*Mart sells that were printed out on a regular ink jet printer.”

Henri sighed, but nodded his agreement. “I just wish that I could solve this one, you know? For Jim.”

“I know, but sometimes you need to back off and change directions if you want to solve a case. Go down to Seattle, see how they want to handle this, and let me know. If they’re going to shove it on some backburner somewhere, fine. We don’t need them to run our own investigation. If they’re pushing it hard, then we run with them and hope they’re going in the right direction.”

“And if they’re not going in the right direction?”

“Then you’d better pray that Jim remains so focused on trying to find Sandburg that he fails to notice that this thing is grinding to a halt.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He hadn’t had to be this focused for a long time. Granted, he also hadn’t flown so completely by the seat of his pants for a long time either. The last time he had, he’d had Jim there as backup. But the fact of the matter was that it was now or never. He’d spent long enough planning, and if he didn’t go now he’d lose the courage to ever attempt an escape.

After Mordecai, or Cai as he called him when the doctor wasn’t around to annoy, was born, the doctor had stepped up his observations of them. His theory was that hearing Blair’s voice so close to the womb during pregnancy would mimic that of a mother’s and the child would act accordingly. The guy obviously had some pretty deep-set mother issues.

But one thing was always certain, the doctor didn’t show up for ‘work’ every other Thursday. At least, Blair thought it was Thursday, it wasn’t like he had a calendar nearby that he could whip out and check to make sure that he had the day correct. The only way that he really knew a day had passed was by the rotation of the guards.

He had tried running before, when he’d first been taken. When John had described how the doctor had taken his own seed and fused it with John’s to create the thing growing inside of him, Blair had lost his grip on sanity for a few moments and had tried to bolt from the room. He hadn’t made it far, but had been given a thorough thrashing in payment for his efforts.

He hadn’t been stupid enough to try again until he’d been able to plot out how he was going to escape.

Then two days ago, Cai had started to cry and jerk when the doctor tested him. He’d mused aloud that the child’s reactions were out of proportion to a normal child and that there might have been a defect in the experiment after all.

Blair had seen what the man did with defective merchandise. It didn’t take the brain of a police detective to figure out that if he didn’t get out of there soon, he’d get to witness the infanticide of his own child. His only child.

Having all options taken away except for the slim hope of escape, Blair had chosen the slim hope and was currently standing just beside the door to the room - waiting.

The baby cried out and Blair had to stop himself from going over to check and see what was wrong. The guard should be coming through the door any minute to remove the diaper pail, deliver new formula, and check for any weapons that Blair might have made.

Well, he was going to find one, but if all went according to plan, he wasn’t going to stay conscious long enough to do anything about it. The door creaked open, and the guard strode confidently through carrying a box of diapers and formula.

Taking one last breath, Blair swung his weapon at the guard’s temple. The man stumbled and fell, and Blair quickly tossed the baby bottle he had used aside so that he could curl his hands around the other man’s throat. Viciously, he slammed the man’s head into the floor a few times and then kicked it for good measure.

He’d either just guaranteed the guard his worst headache ever, or he killed him. Blair didn’t much care which.

Hastily he yanked the guard’s weapons off of his body and secured them on his own person. Then he grabbed the box, snatched the fallen bottle off of the floor, and hurried over to his son.

“Sorry, kiddo,” he muttered to his son as he plucked him out of his warm crib and nestled him into the box, packing him in securely with his blankets and whatever supplies that he could fit in. ”If it makes you feel any better, I could get arrested for lugging you around like this. But trust me when I say this is a way more attractive option than the alternative.”

Loud footsteps announced that whoever was currently watching the surveillance cameras had come to aid the fallen guard.

Grimly, Blair tucked Mordecai down on the floor and shoved his box against the wall. Hopefully the goons would be leery of shooting their employer’s experiment in their attempts to subdue Blair, but if they weren’t, they’d undoubtedly be shooting at his head and torso, not his feet.

Two more guards burst through the door, and Blair didn’t hesitate to unload what ammunition was in his gun into them.

The first one dropped where he stood in a haze of spurting blood, screaming in shock. The second one managed to fire a couple of shots and grazed the left side of Blair’s head and clipped his shoulder before he too went down.

Not questioning his luck and pushing aside the pain from his injuries, Blair grabbed the baby box up off the floor and ran out the door. It had been a long time since he’d had reason to give thanks for the miracle of adrenaline and endorphins, but it appeared that he was going to make up for that lapse by performing his most insane escape attempt since he and Jim had jumped off of that cliff.

At least one of the guards was still moving, and he had no bullets left. Blair had no way of knowing if there were additional guards around, and he couldn’t risk that there were by taking the time to try to relieve his enemies of their weapons.

Determinedly, he hustled down a corridor, and hoped that he was heading in the right direction. A couple of shouts from the other way let him know that he was correct to not take more time in the room. The doctor was apparently very paranoid with his security.

Of course, that also meant that if the corridor was a dead end, he was completely screwed. Hastening his stride, he broke out into as much of a run as he could while carrying the box and fighting the slickness of his shoes as they slipped on the tile flooring because of the blood that had gotten into the treads. He had to be fast because he was leaving a very plain trail for his pursuers to follow.

A door appeared ahead, and he pushed recklessly against it. Surprisingly, it gave way easily, and he teetered into a small, dark room. Cai cried and fussed instantly at the jostling he received, and Blair felt his hope plummet south very quickly. If footprints weren’t enough, a baby’s cry would certainly give away their location.

As his eyes adjusted though, he could see a sliver of light coming on the other side of the room, so he stumbled over things to get to it. As he suspected, it was another door. What he didn’t expect was that the door opened up into a normal, everyday living room complete with a white carpet, television, and a sofa and easy chair set.

He blinked for a second before hurrying through the room, taking a small moment to enjoy the fact that he was putting blood stains on the expensive looking flooring.

There was a flash of artificial light outside a nearby window, so he changed his direction to head opposite of the flash. When he saw a door that obviously lead to the outside, he pushed against it. Even though he didn’t know where he was, the outdoors was the only option he really had. He would never be able to hide in the house, and security was obviously on the other side of the perimeter at the moment.

A cold blast of air hit him along with the sting of icy raindrops. This was so not the type of weather that he liked to be out in, and it was definitely not the type of weather that any newborn should be in. Of course what was behind him was the sort of situation that the father of said newborn couldn’t afford to be in.

Gritting his teeth together, he stumbled out into the night, running headlong into what appeared to be a stand of trees, hoping all the while that the rain would wash away his footprints.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I don’t think I need to tell you this isn’t good,” Henri said to Jim as they sat at Jim’s dining table.

“No,” Jim agreed as he watched the forensics team begin to vacuum around the small gap that was between his front door and the floor.

“He left a note this time.” Henri pointed out with a slight leading lilt to his voice.

“Yeah, noticed that. Can’t tell you why he’d escalate anymore than Dad could. And no, H, I don’t know what the hell ‘Congratulations, it’s a boy!’ means.”

“He addressed it to you.”

Jim responded to the statement with a glare.

“I’m just doing my job here, Jim.” Henri defended.

“You want my guess? He’s going after me because he figures it’ll get to my old man faster.”

“Is he right?” Henri asked as he scribbled down a couple more notes.

“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him?” Jim snapped back.

There was silence for a while as Henri made notes, and Jim glowered at his own front door. Mercifully, the silence was interrupted by the sound of Henri’s cell phone ringing.

“Brown,” he answered professionally.

“Detective Brown, this is Detective Anderson from the Tacoma PD. I have a possible lead on your APB for Dr. Sibille.”

Henri didn’t miss Jim’s eye snapping towards him, so he stood up and walked into the kitchen area so that his fellow detective couldn’t overhear the conversation.

“Yes?” he asked quietly.

“We had a John Doe stumble his way into a local clinic last night. He was in pretty bad shape. Had a baby in a cardboard box and a suicide note in his back pocket. He hasn’t regained consciousness yet, but the note wasn’t his. Seems to be from a Melanie Thronson, and it details some pretty serious stuff. My captain thinks that we have enough for a warrant and is having me put together a search team for this guy’s place. If you want in on it…”

“I’m on my way,” Henri cut in as he started to head towards the door. A stern look from a field technician sent him heading towards the other exit. His stride faltered a little bit when he realized that the room that housed the door still looked like Sandburg was still living in it, but he forced himself to keep going. Jim’s psyche was something he really didn’t need any further insight into.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Blair stared at the ceiling of the hospital and sighed. The doctors had kept the police from coming to question him until they finished making sure that he was in sufficient health, but it wouldn’t be long until he was declared fit.

He barely remembered stumbling into the twenty-four hour clinic - his feet frozen and his legs numb. He certainly didn’t remember being transferred to the hospital.

He’d have to talk to the police, but he really wasn’t looking forward to it. Living that hell once was enough, and if it went to trial he’d be pulled through it again and again.

God knew what the media was going to do to his son. God knew what this was going to do to Jim.

The fucking bastard that did this to him was going to win after all. Jim had a hard enough time dealing with being a ‘freak.’ This was… it was completely unnatural. Jim was never going to be able to cope with it.

The way Blair figured it, the only peace that he was going to get was going to involve moving around, and moving around often so that the scientific community and tabloid hunters didn’t follow his and his son’s every move. It was just going to be him and the kid traveling around the world like a pair of gypsies.

It looked like his life just decided to come full circle.

Blair did not appreciate the irony.

In fact, he felt a hell of a lot like crying because he wasn’t going to get to go home. He wasn’t going to get to sit on the couch watching sports with Jim on the weekends. He wasn’t going to get to hang out with all his friends at the police department because there was no way that they were going to be able to look at his son and see a normal child.

And he couldn’t give him up for adoption either. Aside from the fact that less scrupulous people would love to get their hands on him for genetic testing, he was already taking after his father. His other father.

Fuck it all… Jim deserved better than this. He deserved a normal family that wasn’t some twisted version of revenge.

And Blair couldn’t deny that it was great revenge. It was going to screw up his relationship with Jim, Jim’s relationship with his father, it was going to screw up a lot of relationships because there was no way that this was ever going to work.

From a purely personal perspective it was something he was going to have to spend a lot of time meditating on. He might even have to go see a psychiatrist, because the whole thing was just a complete violation of self from beginning to end.

Yet despite all of that, there was a small part of Blair that was just plain in love with the little child that had been so quiet as his father toted him through the dark night. That love had nothing to do with his potential sentinel abilities or anything else except for the fact that he existed.

It was the only thing that Blair could call remotely good about the whole ordeal, and it was going to have to be good enough.


	5. Chapter 5

William Ellison looked nervously over at his son as they sat in the waiting room. Jimmy had been on edge ever since he had received the phone call that sent them speeding through red lights and intersections on a mad dash to Tacoma.

One Blair Sandburg was apparently unconscious in their hospital, and as Jimmy was listed as next of kin…

William hadn’t been in a car traveling that fast since he got the call that Grace was in labor with Jimmy. He also hoped that he never was in one going that fast again.

Once they made it to the hospital, they’d been told that they had to wait as Mr. Sandburg was being questioned by the police.

That hadn’t set too well with Jimmy, and for a second, William had been afraid that he was going to have to stand between his son and the fine officers of Tacoma. Thankfully his son had simply chosen to glare at everyone and anyone that got in his field of vision.

“Mr. Ellison?” the nurse from earlier asked from the doorway.

“Yes?”

“The police are through. You can see Mr. Sandburg for a while if you’d like. He’s very weak, so try to keep him as calm as possible.”

Jim nodded and stood to follow her.

William just stayed where he was and prayed for the best, because he had no idea what else to pray for.

~~~~~~~~~~

It was only his training in covert operations that kept Jim from gasping when he saw his best friend. Blair’s entire head was pasty white with dark stubble poking out through the skin. There were no long, curly locks of hair on his scalp, only abrasions from a rough shave and rows of stitches in various states of mending. Even his eyebrows looked like they’d been removed.

There was an ugly swelling on the side of his mouth that indicated a recently split lip, and the entire left side of his face was swollen right up to the point where it disappeared in a pile of white gauze and tape.

Straightening his posture, he walked calmly over to the side of the bed and hesitantly touched a ghostly looking hand. Familiar blue eyes snapped open to focus on him, and for a second he could see pure agony on Blair’s face before it shuttered itself.

“Hey, Chief,” he rasped out softly.

“Jim,” Blair greeted in return.

Uncomfortable with the uncharacteristic silence that followed, Jim took the opportunity to drag the nearby chair slightly closer and sat down in it.

“How are you feeling?”

Blair laughed a little at that. “Like shit. Yourself?”

Jim shifted uncomfortably in his chair at the acid in Blair’s tone.

He tried again after a few more moments of silence. “The doctor said that you’re not doing so hot.”

“Yeah, understatement there, but I’ll get better.”

“You want anything?” Jim asked.

“The last year or so of my life back, but I’m not going to get it, now am I?”

Jim took a deep breath and looked away for a moment. “You’re mad at me.”

Blair sighed and his features softened slightly. “No, I’m not mad at you. I just… I wish none of this had ever happened, you know?”

Jim shrugged. “I don’t really know what happened, Chief.”

“You weren’t eavesdropping just now?” The incredulousness in his tone was hard to miss.

“Didn’t know which room you were in. You know how hospitals are - lots of people, and they all sound and smell different. Beside your heart isn’t… it isn’t in its normal pattern. It’s weaker, less bass, more tenor. I’d guess that it’s a sign of less exercise making your blood vessels contract.”

“I think that is the most information I’ve ever gotten out of you on the subject, and I’m stuck in a hospital about to be shipped off to the psych ward for evaluation.”

“What?”

“Don’t get huffy, Jim. I don’t blame them for it. Truth is I might need it. I think I might be a little nutty at the moment.”

“Then we’ll get you somebody at home. Dad knows… he knows lots of people. The best. I’m not leaving you in a generic hospital ward to get evaluated by staff doctors who spend their time with drug addicts and suicide watches and…”

“Whoa, Jim man, time out. Just because somebody is on staff doesn’t mean that they’re not good. Besides I’m not sure, I don’t think it would be good for you for me to go… home.” Blair choked a little on the last word, and he tried to break eye contact, but Jim wasn’t having it.

“You belong at home.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do!”

“No, you don’t. You don’t even know what is going on!”

“What is there to know? Something happened to you after you left. Pretty quickly given the fact that you dropped off the face of the planet. It looks like you’ve just spent the past year being roommates with the devil, so I’m guessing that ‘something’ must be pretty damn awful. That means that you belong at home with people who love you.”

“Since I left? I didn’t leave Jim. I freaking opened the door one day and got chloroformed by your weeping ex-girlfriend. I’ve spent the past however long stuck in the basement of some house with some mental case. I don’t even know what year it is let alone what month or day. I’ve seen… I’ve seen shit that belongs in some late night movie, and… And fuck Ellison, do you think that maybe you could try buying your own condoms instead of relying on your latest conquest to supply them?” Blair snarled at he tried to sit up in his bed.

Jim frowned in confusion. “But you left… your note,” he sputtered.

Blair deflated from his ire and sagged back down. “Expert forger, I don’t blame you for believing it. Hell, I thought I’d written it under the influence of drugs when he showed me the draft copy he’d had made.”

“Who? Who did this to you?”

“Look, Jim it doesn’t matter. The police already have all the information, and you have to keep calm about this. If he got wind of your sentinel abilities, he wouldn’t rest until he…”

“Who?” Jim interrupted.

“Dr. Ian Sibille. Your dad knew him. I’m guessing you do too, given the color you’re turning.”

“He’s sent a few packages.”

“Then you know why I can’t go with you.”

“No, I don’t. You belong with your family. You’ll do better among friends than you will with strangers. Supportive environments can increase the level of recovery. You quoted me the statistics once upon a time.”

“Jim, I’m trying to make this easy on you. There are thing about this that you’re not going to be able to deal with. Hell, I’m not able to deal with them all that well.”

“Because you’re too close, you’re the victim of a horrible crime. I…”

“You were the target of it! That man took me because it would hurt you! Do you think that you’re going to be able to handle that? I know you, and if you’re near me you’re just going to eat yourself away with guilt each and every time I have a nightmare.”

“Maybe so, but it’ll hurt me more if you don’t come home. Do you think I’m going to be able to handle wondering where you are? Wondering if you’re doing okay? Wondering if Naomi has dragged you off to some fringe healer who is messing you up even more than you already are?”

A knock on the door interrupted their argument, and Henri’s head popped through the door.

“I was hoping that the name was just a coincidence,” he said as he walked into the room. “Sorry, Jim, I need to talk to Sandburg alone for a little while.”

Jim was thinking about protesting when Blair reached out and patted his arm. “Go. I’ll still be here to finish arguing with you later. And no eavesdropping.”

Jim reluctantly walked out of the room. It took a lot of his willpower to not listen in, but if he wanted Blair to come home, he was going to have to play by the rules for a little bit longer.

Strolling away from the door, he walked back towards the waiting room and was surprised to see that his father wasn’t there. Catching the scent of his expensive cologne, he followed the trail and was surprised to find him standing outside the nursery.

“Dad?”

“He’s so tiny. You forget how small they are when they’re first born. You were much bigger. Stevie though, he was smaller. Your mother had taken up smoking.”

“Dad?” Jim asked again with even more confusion in his voice.

His father pointed to one of the infants in the window.

“Why are you looking at the babies?”

“I overheard the detectives talking in the hallway. Your friend brought that little one in with him. Poor kid was in a cardboard box.”

“‘Congratulations, it’s a boy,’” Jim muttered under his breath.

William nodded. “Mordecai Bonner. Horrible name to saddle a kid with if you ask me. Whatever happened to Joe or Jack or Jim?”

“I grew up joined the army and joined the police department, not sure about Joe or Jack.”

“When did you get a sense of humor?”

“I always joke when the world is crashing down around me.”

“Really?”

“No, but Sandburg would appreciate it. He… he lectured me about my intimate practices. I think, Dad, I think…”

“That he’s yours? I’m pretty sure about it. He’s been restless and cranky. Keeps trying to cover his ears like you did when you were little.”

“Shit,” Jim swore as his anger at the entire situation bubbled up.

“Yeah,” his father agreed softly.

~~~~~~~~~~~

“There was nothing left of the house by the time we got there. The fire crews beat us there. The neighbors down the road were actually driving into town and saw the smoke,” Henri said while his eyes focused on a spot just above Blair’s head.

“No evidence then?”

“There might be something left in the rooms down below. We’ll check it out when the fire marshal clears us to go in. I’m pretty sure that they aren’t going to press charges against you if they find the bodies though, so I wouldn’t worry about that.”

“I’m not worried. There isn’t a jury alive that would convict me, you know that. You read the preliminary report,” Blair pointed out as he stared directly at the detective. “It’s why you can’t look at me.”

Henri’s shocked gaze fell down to look at his friend. “That isn’t true.”

“H, man, I’ve got a minor in psychology, remember? You’re freaked out by all of this. You should be.”

“It, that isn’t you. What he did to you…”

“What he did to me was nothing compared to what he did to the other men that he has taken captive over the years.”

“Yeah, but they don’t have a living reminder of it.”

“They’re not living at all anymore,” Blair argued. “Besides, my son isn’t responsible for what that evil son of a bitch did.”

“It isn’t, god, he’s Jim’s… It isn’t right.”

“None of this ever was, but he isn’t to blame anymore than a child born out of a rape is to blame for the actions of his or her father.”

“It isn’t natural.”

“I know that too. Believe me. I’ve had months to think about how unnatural it all is. Quite frankly, the fact that Dr. Sibille disappeared is pretty damn relieving. It might actually stay out of the press for a while make it easier for me to get away.”

“Away? Where are you planning on going?”

“Anywhere, everywhere, it really wasn’t so bad growing up that way. I figure it can’t be too bad for Mordecai either.”

Henri winced at the name, but ignored making a comment about it in favor of pursuing a more relevant topic. “You can’t do that to Jim.”

“Yeah, that’s what he said, but he doesn’t know about the little genetic experiment yet. “

“And you think that he’s going to let you leave with his first born child?”

“How do you think James Ellison is going to be able to handle the fact that said first born child is also my first born child? Tell me how you think Jim’s going to feel when none of his coworkers will look at him because his son doesn’t genetically have a mother? How do you think he’s going to react when they won’t let his son play with their kids? How do you think he’s going to handle it when they all avoid looking at his son’s picture because they can’t stand seeing both of us in his features?”

“What I think is that he’ll handle it a lot better than he would if you take his son away from him. He’ll handle it better than the pity he’s going to see when you take off, and he gets postcards from around the globe. He’ll handle it better than you breaking him and leaving him alone to wonder if you’d still be around if he had just started looking for you sooner,” Henri shot back with uncharacteristic fire.

Blair leaned back a bit, not sure what to say.

“And I also think that you shouldn’t be worrying so damn much about what people think about you. You never did before, and you sure shouldn’t now. Besides that, you aren’t stopping to think about what it’s going to do to you to be away from that Neanderthal you live with. Seems to me if you’re worrying about him so much, you should do yourself a favor and hang around, because it’s going to drive you nuts being away from him.”

“Henri…”

“I’m not done! See, way I figure it, you’ve got a better chance of keeping the kid if you go with Jim. Child services is going to be pretty leery of putting that baby back in your care after what you just went through until they’re satisfied that your evaluation comes back clean. Jim’s got a stable home for him. You don’t.”

“You just think of all of that this moment?”

“Nah, been thinking about it ever since I saw that suicide note Jim’s ex wrote. I was just still hoping that it wasn’t you.”

There was a timid tap at the door that heralded the nurse’s arrival, and Henri left with a slight nod of his head in Blair’s direction.

~~~~~~~~~~

Jim paced nervously in the lobby waiting for visiting hours to begin. He hadn’t been able to see Blair again after Henri had ushered him out the night before, so he’d spent the night in a very nice hotel courtesy of his father’s credit card.

While it rankled that he couldn’t stay, he’d taken the opportunity to work on his father about setting up lawyers and psychiatrists and daycare and all of the things that he figured he was going to need in the near future. William had been surprisingly agreeable to everything. Jim wasn’t sure whether that was because he was trying to make up for lost time, or if he was just excited about having a grandson.

Maybe it was both. Jim didn’t really care. All he cared about was getting Blair to say yes to the plan. Everything else would just have to wait. The instant the clock hit the hour mark, he was moving towards Blair’s room.

“Hey, Chief,” he said parroting his greeting from the prior day.

“Jim.”

“So look, I know that you’re set against coming home, but I’ve got it all figured out…”

“Jim, hold on, there’s something I need to tell you first.”

“If it’s about the kid, I already know. Although, I’ve got to tell you, I’m not loving the name.”

“Okay, then I need to tell you something else.”

“He’s mine, kinda guessed that already.”

“No, Jim, he’s mine.”

Jim frowned and tried not to show the disappointment that run through him. Sure he hadn’t even wanted kids, but he’d already grown sort of attached to the idea.

“Oh.”

“At least you didn’t provide the Y chromosome. There isn’t an easy way to tell you this, but Dr. Sibille was a geneticist, and he was obsessed with ‘breaking’ the power that women hold over men. He felt that if he could find a way to enable men to reproduce without the aid of a female that he’d be setting us free.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You know how they cloned that sheep by putting genetic material into a developing egg cell? Well, he was taking it a step further. He figured out some way to merge two sperm together and then transplant them into a donor egg cell. If the process works, out comes baby. If it doesn’t… I guess he had some pretty hideous failures at the beginning.”

Jim’s mind tried not to process the information, but he forced it to as he stumbled towards the chair. “I need to sit down.”

“So, you see why I don’t think it’s a good idea to stay around,” Blair continued as Jim put his head between his knees and tried to breathe.

Jim’s head jerked up. “No, I don’t. I see this as the reason you have to stay, unless you intend on going to custody hearings for the next eighteen years. Neither of us combined have the money or the power that my father has to get the best doctors and lawyers available. Besides, I still don’t want you to go.”

“Yeah, that is what H said you’d say.”

“Well, he’s right.”

“Then I guess I’d better go with you, huh?”

“Yes, you… did you just agree to come home?”

“Yeah, I did. I’m still not sold on the idea, but I don’t think there is an ideal situation, so I might as well go with you.”

“I’m flattered,” Jim deadpanned to hide the happiness that he felt.

“You should be.”

“So as long as you’re coming home, we should discuss this name that you gave my son.”

“No way, man. The name stays.”

“Chief…”

“Look, he’s named after his grandparents, that is a significant anthropological practice in several cultures.”

“Neither of my parents have anything close to Mordecai or Bonner in them. Neither does your mother and you don’t know who your father is.” Jim said, still balking at the idea.

“William means strong willed warrior, Mordecai means warrior. Naomi means beautiful or gentle, Bonner means gentle. It was all I could remember.”

“We could look up names when we get home.” Jim suggested.

“No. Jim, this is important to me. It was the part of me that I got to hold on to when I was down there.”

Jim felt ashamed for a moment before he nodded. “Okay, Chief. You win. Just let me pick the nickname for the kid, and I’ll be a happy man.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ian Sibille was not a happy man. His home was gone, and he’d had to set fire to all of his genetic samples. There had only been time to grab all of his research notes and findings before he’d left.

Good help was so difficult to find these days. Was it really too much to ask that a group of trained guards keep one unarmed anthropologist in one room?

Apparently so.

Once Sandburg had escaped, there was no other option but to vacate and keep as much information as possible out of the hands of lesser minds who would revile his work.

Still, all was not lost. Ellison’s son would no doubt insist on Sandburg returning to Cascade with him, and the child would go with them.

It would be a simple matter to check up on the boy as he grew. See if there were any obvious developmental issues. If not, well, after a few years even the most diligent of parents become lax, and he knew a lot of people that wouldn’t mind helping him disappear with his ‘nephew.’


End file.
